


Goodbye Fire Island

by Continental



Series: Is This Thing Cursed? [2]
Category: Alkaline Trio (Band)
Genre: (Minor) Violence, Angst, Drug Abuse, Heartbreak, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-15
Updated: 2018-11-15
Packaged: 2019-08-24 05:43:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,534
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16634039
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Continental/pseuds/Continental
Summary: “What do you want?”“Whatever you’ll give me.”





	Goodbye Fire Island

Someone was beating on the front door.

Dan jolted awake. He was disoriented, confused, and, when the realization of what was happening settled in, irritated. The clock on the bedside table told him it was 9:27 A.M. 

He rolled out of bed, threw on the first set of clothes he found, and answered the door with an exhausted scowl.

It was October. The summer colors were changing to the warm tones of autumn, the temperature was plummeting, and clouds were beginning to block out any bit of warmth the sun could offer, and yet Derek still wasn’t wearing a jacket. He grinned as he tried to rub down the chill bumps on his arms. 

The scowl disappeared.

“Sorry, I know it’s early. I, uh… had a bad night. Last night.”

“No, it’s alright,” Dan said, and let him in. “I was just getting up, anyway...”

Derek kicked off his shoes and lied down on the couch while Dan fixed their usual cups of coffee. They sat together and talked for a while, as their routine always went, and Dan let Derek tell him what the problem was. He talked quietly, shame in his voice and posture. Dan felt as if he’d heard this same lament a thousand times now, but he listened intently, and Derek spoke with the same agony as he had the first time.

“Almost a year, Danny,” he said, a bitter smile eating away at his face. “You’d think I’d be over it by now.”

“How can I help?”

Derek smiled at his lap. Dan took the time to study his face, really study it, deeply. He used to be so pretty. Clear skin, bright eyes, full body… Now, the flesh along his nose and cheekbones had been nervously picked and scratched until little scabs formed on the surface. The ongoing stress had obliterated his appetite and caused his weight to drop drastically, and sleepless nights had corroded the youthful glow of his eyes and darkened the skin around them. Even so, they were still the most stunning eyes Dan had ever seen. 

Against all odds, Derek was still the most beautiful person he could imagine. Simply less delicate than before. Or, perhaps, more delicate; the events of the past year had left him just shy of brittle, the drive that kept him going deteriorating at an alarming speed.

Sometimes it felt like Dan was watching a suicide. Other times it felt like a murder, and the killer was off in Los Angeles, having a blast, like he hadn’t left a corpse in place of the person he’d said he loved. 

“I’m not sure you can.”

Maybe it would’ve been easier if Dan hadn’t known him before the incident. If he hadn’t had to watch him die before he was dead.

“Did you take anything?”

“I doubled up on temazepam last night…” Derek scoffed. “It didn’t help.”

“I wish you wouldn’t do that.”

“And I wish I could sleep.”

“Did you take anything else? Today?”

There was the briefest hesitation when Derek parted his lips to speak. Dan should have known then, but he waited. He would believe every lie Derek told him.

“No.”

“Good. I’m proud of you.”

For a second, Derek looked ill.

 

~

 

Their empty coffee cups were left on the living room table. 

Derek kicked through trash and a pile of his own clothes and lied down on the bed in Dan’s room. He pulled open the top dresser of the bedside table and took a cigarette from the pack inside, and undid his belt with it hanging from his mouth. His lips had been bitten raw and picked at until they bruised, bled and scabbed over, but Dan still wanted to kiss them.

Dan took the lighter from his desk and lit the cigarette. Derek was on something; he had that addict twitch that tugged at the nerves in his face and almost made him drop his cigarette. Dan couldn’t even be disappointed. Derek lied a lot. He told him what he wanted to hear. 

Dan reached for Derek’s waistband, but gentle fingers stilled his hands.

“Danny…” 

Derek’s pupils were blown wide, so much that his iris was reduced to a thin blue ring. He held his cigarette between his fingers, ashes falling onto the bed sheets. 

Derek trailed his hand up Dan’s arm, and grabbed him by the collar.

“Kiss me first.”

Dan didn’t hesitate. Derek’s lips were always scalding hot, like a fever permanently ran through his body. They felt so good on his own. They kissed slowly, savoring the moment. At least, Dan was savoring the moment. Derek was thinking again… he could almost taste the thoughts ripping his consciousness apart. The shake in his hands had gotten worse, and he turned away from Dan’s mouth to take a drag from his cigarette. 

Dan watched him smoke, deep drags filling his lungs and doing nothing but assisting the suicide. Derek looked like he was going to either throw up or pass out, but he still dragged Dan forward and guided his hand to his crotch.

“What do you want?” Dan asked, and slipped his hand past the waistband of Derek’s boxers.

Derek closed his eyes and blew smoke into the air. He tilted his head back, as if he was thinking, as if they both didn’t already know what he was going to say.

“Whatever you’ll give me.”

They did this same thing every weekend, but he could never get over the feeling of Derek’s nails in his shoulder when he took his cock in his mouth. 

The sex was great. It always was. After months of feeling empty, it was nice to make Derek feel full again, in any way he could, and it was nice for Dan to feel needed, even for just a couple hours on the weekend, even if it was just to fill a void that his own best friend had left.

Derek moaned like a whore and ripped at Dan’s back with his nails, and Dan pretended the open wounds on Derek’s thighs didn’t exist.

 

 

~

 

Dan pinned him down, thrusting between his legs, Derek’s moans and screams urging him on. Derek liked it when it hurt. He only liked it when it hurt. There was no right or wrong way to hurt him, if you asked him, just ways that Dan felt better about than others. Fucking too hard walked the line of acceptable and unacceptable for Dan. It always felt good in the heat of the moment, but cleaning Derek’s blood out of the sheets was a vile reality check.

Derek was making soft crying noises, interlaced with moans and the occasional utterance of Dan’s name. His words slurred until they became unintelligible.

The crying became quieter. He whimpered, gasped for air.

A short, deep sob.

The grip he had on Dan’s shoulders failed, slowly, and his arms hit the mattress like dead weights.

He wasn’t making any noise at all.

Dan froze and, when Derek didn’t move, broke all contact with him. 

He sat back. Observed. 

Derek’s eyes were glassy and dilated, and rolled around in his skull without direction. His breathing was harsh and shallow, and his face had lost all trace of color, aside from the flush of his cheeks.

“Derek? Hey… baby, what’s wrong?” Dan jostled his shoulder, but Derek lied there, slack jawed, with unfocused eyes staring up at the ceiling.

“Derek? Derek, please… tell me– tell me, what’s my name? Can you tell me that? What’s your name? Please, can you at least tell me that? For the love of God, Derek, say something to me–“

He had heard that, when in disastrous situations, you stop thinking. For him, it seemed everything slowed down, and he experienced all thoughts at one moment.

First thought: Derek lied again.

Second thought: Derek overdosed.

Third thought: Derek is going to die, right here.

The panic set in.

Dan had 911 on the line and his fingers down Derek’s throat, when Derek came to abruptly and lurched over the side of the bed. He grasped an empty McDonald’s bag just as his stomach convulsed, and he spewed his guts halfway into the bag, and the rest onto the front of his shirt.

Dan dropped his phone and collapsed in a heap of relieved crying. Remembering his phone, he lifted it to his ear and gave a short apology before hanging up. 

Derek stared at him.

“Everything alright, Danny?”

 

~

 

Derek brushed his teeth and redressed in one of Dan’s shirts, and a pair of his pajama pants. Dan brought him a water bottle and a mint from the kitchen, in nothing but a pair of black sweatpants, and sat across from Derek in his desk chair. The tears hadn’t completely left his eyes.

Derek smiled, awkwardly.

“This isn’t exactly what I like to do after sex, but it’ll have to do, I guess.”

Dan didn’t laugh.

“Did you drive here?” 

“I never do,” Derek said, and placed the mint on his tongue. “I called a cab.”

“Please let me drive you to the hospital—“

“I’m fine, Danny.”

After tediously picking through the vomit with a pair of tweezers, Dan found two aspirins, a Xanax bar, and five pills, half-dissolved and therefore unidentifiable. 

“What are these?”

“Shit if I know.”

“So you just took five random pills with fucking Xanax and aspirin?”

“I had some orange juice with it.”

“Derek, stop. Where did you get these?”

“I… honestly don’t remember.”

“You’re a fucking idiot.”

He had the audacity to look insulted.

“Excuse me?”

“Do you have any idea how stupid that is? What if those pills couldn’t be taken together? Wh—“

“Well, according to thirty minutes ago, I don’t think they can.“

“Shut up and listen to me, Derek. What if you had died? What the hell then?”

“I’d be dead?”

“Don’t say it so casually—”

“Everyone dies. It’s not a big deal.”

“Stop it! You’re not… you can’t just kill yourself over a stupid guy, Derek.”

“Maybe not today, but whether I’m meaning to or not, it’s gonna happen at some point. I’m finally going to pick the right combination of pills and—“

Dan smacked him across the face, silencing him. There was a period where Derek just sat on the bed, staring up at Dan in shock, and then he rose to his feet and slammed his fist against Dan’s jaw.

They hit the floor in a mess of limbs, hitting, clawing, biting. Dan wasn’t holding back anymore, his anger getting the best of him, and he swung and kicked and aimed to damage, to injure, to hurt. 

Soon he realized that Derek wasn’t trying anymore. 

He was just sobbing, fat tears dripping down his cheeks, drooling, snot mixed with blood from his nose strung out and stuck to the carpet. He had his head turned away from Dan and his arms raised to his chest like he was trying to protect himself, and when Dan pulled away to look at him, he looked almost like a child having a nightmare. There was a handprint on his right cheek, visible through the carnage, stark and red against his pale skin.

Dan looked up and caught a glimpse of them in his full length mirror. Busted lip, bloody nose, darkening bruise on his jaw. Towering over a scared, confused, broken man… Playing with the heart he was entrusted with.

A voice in the back of his head prodded at his consciousness. 

_You’re no better than the last one. Are you?_

Dan collapsed, and his head fell to rest on Derek’s abdomen as he, too, began to cry.

“I don’t want you to die, Derek. I can’t let you die.”

“I’m sorry,” Derek gasped, covering his face with his hands. “I’m sorry.”

 

~

 

It took a long time for things to settle down. By the time the tears stopped, the sun had gone down, and they sat together on the bed with Dan’s Tv being the only light in the room. 

Dan rested with his head against Derek’s thighs, Derek absently stroking the jaw he had bruised. 

“You shouldn’t have to see me like this.”

“I should. I can’t help you if I don’t know how you’re hurting.”

“Danny… please stop trying to save me.”

“I can’t do that and you know it.”

“I’m a lost cause, okay? I can’t eat. I can’t sleep. My friends are all leaving, getting married, moving off with their families, and what am I doing? I’m one misjudged dose away from a coma or a coffin, and the worst part is that I don’t give a shit anymore.” 

Derek choked. The glow of the Tv illuminated his glassy eyes.

“Just let me die. Do it for me.”

Dan was silent. For a while, they just breathed together. Synchronized. Two completely different aspects of one person’s departure. 

Dan took a deep breath. He sat up to look Derek in his swollen, bruised face, and was still taken back by how beautiful he continued to be.

“I know I can’t fix everything, Derek. But damn it if I won’t try. If you just stay here, I’ll do my best to make you the happiest you could ever be.”

He took his hands in his own. Derek saw nothing but sincerity in those awfully innocent doe eyes.

“I love you. I love you so much. It may be hard to believe, because I know he said it to you every day, and I know I’ve been an asshole, but I promise you, I fucking mean it. I love you more than anything, and I would do anything for you to be happy, Derek. You don’t have to believe me, but, I swear to God, I mean it.”

“I believe you.”

Dan smiled, and reached out his hand to cradle Derek’s cheek. Derek sighed, content, and leaned his face into Dan’s palm.

“I’ll give everything I have to make sure you’re happy, if you just stay with me.”

Derek looked as if he was trying to speak, but no words would come. Eventually, he forced out a few painful words, sounding vaguely like an apology.

Dan brought him forward and kissed him slowly, tasting him, feeling the burning heat of his lips on his own. He kissed his lips, his cheeks, his nose, jaw, neck, shoulders, chest. He kissed the sensitive places, the intimate places, and ran his tongue along every curve until Derek was writhing, until he forgot everything again. 

 

~

 

The next morning, Derek was gone. His cellphone immediately went to voicemail, and his house phone rang until Dan hung up. 

He had a single voicemail, from 12:24 a.m. The number was familiar.

He listened, his eyes growing wide with each word that was spoken. An aura of disbelief settled into the bedroom, and he was suddenly, irrationally scared. 

He swore and threw his phone across the room. It landed on top of a pair of Derek’s shorts, and played the voicemail once more as he ran to get his jacket.

_“Hey Danny, it’s Matt. We haven’t talked in a while. I’m in Chicago for the week and was wondering if you wanted to meet up? Not today though. I’m busy.”_


End file.
